Poor Georg Loos’ 1979 season started bad (and it would not get much better after that); the plane which should deliver his 935 Porsches could not open its freight doors in New York (they were frozen) and the plane set off to Brussels again with the expensive Porsches still in its belly. When it returned, the doors opened all right and a 24 hour journey to Florida begun. Despite missing much of practice, the cars qualified second and third, behind the Interscope car of Ongais.
The race was just over 1 hour when Fitzpatrick blew a head gasket, and soon he was followed by new signing Wollek in the other car who lost a turbo, which wouldn’t be the only one. Wollek dropped to 20th place, but fought back to third, while the other car retired for good. Early leaders Stommelen and team-mates Jöst and Merl retired after six hours, and when the second Loos car retired too, it was time for the Americans to take over. The brand-new IMSA style Interscope 935 with a single turbocharger of Field/Ongais/Haywood had their share of troubles too (they spent the last 11 minutes waiting for the flag on the straight!), but they won the race, with an 8-year old Ferrari Daytona in second place - the improved 512 BB’s were fast but retired.
Surprise of the race were the Mazda RX7 cars, they won the under-2500 cc class and finished fifth and sixth overall. We would hear more from those cars - not only in the States...